


A Night at Christie's

by Donay



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 17:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donay/pseuds/Donay
Summary: Two years into their marriage, Matthew and Sarah attend a posh benefit at Christie's. Everything Matthew wanted from life seems to be in his grasp, yet he can't stop thinking about what he's lost. His night among the rich and famous goes sour when he encounters a blast from his past.
Comments: 41
Kudos: 48





	A Night at Christie's

“A Night at Christie’s”

A Cormoran Strike Fanfic

by D.B. Saks

**Chapter One**

“Jesus, Sarah, how much longer are you going to be?” Matthew Cunliffe had been waiting outside the bathroom door since he had gotten home, stressed and overheated, twenty minutes ago. The air conditioning system on his Audi Cabriolet had not been able to keep up with the unusual heat wave of the past 24 hours, and he had not wanted to put the top down. Sweat and wind would wreak havoc on his carefully sprayed hair, and he had to look his best for the benefit tonight at Christie’s. Word was that the Duchess of Cornwall, a great patron of the arts, might stop in, and he had to look his best. Granted, she was no Kate Middleton, but still. Royalty. Even of the horsey septuagenarian variety. Normally, Sarah wouldn’t have rated tickets to an event so high-profile, but her boss’ boss had come down with a summer cold and had to beg off at the last minute.

Sarah, Matthew’s wife of the past two years, had been in the flat’s one bathroom since he’d gotten home, ready to burst. On reflection, curry might not have been the best choice for lunch, but he’d planned on getting home two hours before they had to leave. There’d be plenty of time to shower, change, and take care of digestive business. But things had been chaotic at work. Since he’d lost his job at his former firm due to what the HR people called cutbacks, he’d had to take a considerable pay cut, so he worked whatever hours he could, trying to climb back up the ladder at the new company. When Paul had said, “Sorry, mate, this has to be done before you leave,” he’d wanted to tell him to piss off, but the days when he could blow off a superior’s mandate were long gone. Tom Turvey had seen to that.

His guts had begun to churn about ten minutes before he’d pulled into his extortionately-priced parking space, which was still a good five-minute trot from the flat on Hornton. He was paying a mint to live in Kensington, so the sacrifice had been convenience and space. No dedicated parking, no second half-bath. He tried not to think about the fact that the payments for the Audi, the parking space, the monthly flat rental, and so many other things were coming up next week.

“Be out in a bit, love,” Sarah had called through the door when he’d rattled the handle. She had classical music playing, meaning she was either in the bath or had just come out. Matthew thought it was Mozart, but he tended to think all classical music was Mozart. The extent of his knowledge was having seen _Amadeus_ once and fallen asleep, but he didn’t like to admit that to Sarah’s arty friends.

“Hurry,” he’d said shortly. “I need the loo.”

But she hadn’t hurried, because she never did. Sarah was on her own timeline. About the only thing she was ever punctual about was work, and even that had begun to slip lately. She’d taken more sick days than she should, in his opinion, because the woman got headaches at the drop of a hat. Usually when he was in the mood for sex. His mouth twisted at the old cliché, which seemed to be mostly what his home life consisted of these days.

“I’m about to take a crap in the sink!” he bellowed, not caring for once if the neighbors heard him. He wasn’t entirely sure he was exaggerating, either. He loosened his belt. Even if she came out now, it was going to be touch and go.

“All right, all right,” she said, in a completely unconcerned voice. Finally, the blessed handle turned and Sarah came out, looking picture perfect in a shocking pink cocktail dress. He couldn’t stop to appreciate the scenery. He shoulder-checked her on the way into the bathroom, eliciting a “Christ, watch where you’re going!” from his wife. He was not entirely sure he hadn’t done it on purpose.

**Chapter Two**

The elegant marble façade of Christie’s came into view as the taxi turned onto King Street. Matthew hadn’t felt like hunting for parking, an occurrence so common that he sometimes wondered why it had been so important to him to have a private car in Central London in the first place. With the money he could have saved on parking and payments, they could have afforded a flat with a second bathroom. Of course, he hadn’t known when he bought the Audi that he was about to lose his high-paying job. _Along with every other fucking thing that mattered_ , he thought, in a moment of bitterness.

Sarah got out while he paid the driver. Sarah never paid for anything for the two of them. Her salary was reserved for her M.A.C. lipsticks, her Italian leather handbags, and her constant pricey lunches and cocktail hours with her work friends. He hadn’t minded so much when he’d been flush; then, her queenly disregard for such mundanities as restaurant checks and taxi fares had struck him as adorably feminine. Robin, his ex, had often embarrassed him with her Yorkshire penny-pinching ways. He had feared others were inwardly sneering at them when she had suggested they catch a bus instead of hiring a taxi, or disputed an extra drink they hadn’t ordered on a bar tab. Now he found himself wishing Sarah would take a few more buses.

Matthew couldn’t remember what the benefit was for—some literacy charity the Duchess of Cornwall supported, he vaguely recalled—but he felt his blood pressure notching down as they crossed into the cool interior of the venerated auction house’s London salesrooms. Soft music was playing—Mozart?—and the lights had been dimmed to highlight the beautifully displayed pieces in their niches and on the walls. Much of the art currently on display was modern, and Matthew privately thought it was ugly and amateurish, but he never said so to anyone but Sarah, who laughed at his Philistine ways. Matthew didn’t need to understand art in order to appreciate a £50,000 reserve. Being in the vicinity of moneyed culture always made Matthew feel a part of it.

He glanced at his wife with a little more appreciation than he’d previously shown this evening. Sarah had always been pretty, although in his most honest moments, he admitted she wasn’t as sexy as the woman he’d thrown over for her. Sarah’s beauty was of the slightly horsey type that made her fit in so well with the buck-toothed, Germanically-seasoned English aristocracy when they visited the salesrooms. He remembered thinking when he’d met her at uni that she looked quite a bit like Zara Phillips, the Queen’s granddaughter. The pink satin of the undoubtedly horribly expensive dress suited her pale complexion well, and she hadn’t been pregnant long enough before her miscarriage two years ago for it to have altered her fit figure. He thought she had too heavy a hand with the eye makeup, but the one time he’d suggested that bright blue had been fine for Princess Diana in 1987 but wasn’t very modern, she’d nearly bitten his head off.

Tonight, she looked good next to him as they passed a tall mirror with a Baroque-looking gold frame. He fancied they could be mistaken for minor royals, he with his tall, square-jawed good looks and Sarah with her fussy feathered hairpiece resting atop her white-blonde up-do. The room was filling up fast, and Matthew headed to the drinks table to secure some champagne for him and Sarah as she flitted over to her boss, Andrew, and his fourth wife, who looked like she’d gone under the knife about twice too often. Matthew could hear the phony bray of laughter he associated with Sarah’s work persona as he quaffed one measure of champagne in a single long gulp, and then picked up two flutes to bring back.

As he meandered back toward his wife, in no particular hurry to join her tedious work conversation, Matthew scanned the room with the practiced eye of a habitual people-watcher. He recognized a few people whose names he’d seen in tabloids and news articles—was that Cressida Bonas, the model who’d once dated Prince Harry before he’d started seeing that gorgeous, totally unsuitable American actress?—but he certainly didn’t see Camilla anywhere. Just as he’d decided there was no one there worth sidling up next to, a flash of emerald green caught his eye, and he felt his stomach drop an inch or two.

Could it be? _No_ , he told himself. Green was not exactly an unpopular color for cocktail dresses. Anyway, the wasp-waisted woman with the curvy hips was brunette, not strawberry blonde. But as he studied the figure across the room, whose back was turned toward him, he noticed the way her white hand lifted to push her wayward locks back from her forehead. Unlike most of the other women in the room, she’d made no attempt to school her hair into a French twist, a half-up-half-down, or any style at all. He noticed her shoes were the same utilitarian black pumps he’d so loathed when they’d been in their shared closet on Albury Street. He thought they looked cheap; she’d shrugged and said they were comfortable and with their thick heel, she could run in them in a pinch. _Imagine buying high heels with the consideration of whether you could run in them_.

“Earth to Matthew!” Sarah’s voice exploded in his left ear and he almost dropped the champagne. “Were you just going to drink them all yourself?” He stared at her as if she were a stranger for a moment, noticing that her mascara had clumped a bit on her lash extensions.

“Come on!” she said. “Andrew and Lisa want to introduce us to some Jordanian mogul who’s buying half the pieces in the place.” Sarah took a big swallow of the champagne and tugged his hand, mercifully not looking to see what had captured his attention. Unwillingly, he followed.

From that point on, Matthew Cunliffe’s night at Christie’s was ruined. He ate canapes he couldn’t remember, met famous people and exhibited all the charisma of a utility pole, and listened numbly to a speech about art and literacy that couldn’t have interested him if it had been performed by Keira Knightley in the nude. He kept looking around for the distinctive green dress, and every time he thought he saw it, Sarah dragged him away to shake hands and bump cheeks with some other ugly patron. His eye was also peeled for a man who would have stood out in any room due to his height and bulk, but particularly in this elegant setting, where his pube-like brown hair and ungainly limp would have made him very much the proverbial bull in the china shop. But for the next two hours, he saw neither his ex-wife, Robin Ellacott, nor her business partner, the celebrated private detective Cormoran Strike.

Sarah had grown both quite drunk and quite bored with his wooden-faced demeanor. He was sure he would hear about it later, but now her disgust with him had at least one benefit: she stopped introducing him to people. Hissing, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but if you can’t be any more lively than this, just fuck off home already,” she had slithered away from him and collared a handsome, arrogant-looking blonde man Matthew thought was the recently-divorced aristocrat, Jago Ross. He vaguely remembered Robin mentioning years ago that Strike had once dated Jago’s now-ex-wife, the notoriously beautiful and wild socialite, Charlotte Campbell, but he had been so much in the habit of dismissing anything she told him about Strike with elaborate contempt and boredom that he couldn’t remember any details. Even now, the association of the arctic-looking Ross with Strike triggered a wave of distaste in Matthew. Anything that reminded him of Strike did.

Matthew plucked another flute of champagne off of a circulating waiter’s tray and drank it down in two. More used to beer than champagne in quantity, Matthew found his head was swimming a bit and he definitely needed the loo. Fortunately, he’d been here with Sarah enough to know where the nearest relatively private one was, so he made his way to a discreet door leading to the business offices and was relieved to find it unlocked.

The quiet of the corridor, with its subdued nighttime lighting, felt blissful. Matthew took the stairs two at a time up to the first floor, where Sarah’s office was located. By the time he reached the landing, he decided moving so quickly had been a mistake, but at least he got to the bathroom faster.

Sitting on the toilet to give his now-pounding head time to recover, Matthew checked his phone. There were texts from two numbers, one Sarah’s and one unknown.

Out of habit, he checked Sarah’s texts first. They were predictable. When she was drinking and unhappy with him, her nasty side came out.

_**I go to your shitty little work functions with a smile plastered on my face, and you can’t even work up a civil word for Betsy and George**_?

**_What the fuck is wrong with you tonight_**?

**_I’m getting really tired of your bullshit, Matthew. People are asking me what your problem is_**.

**_If I’d known you’d be like this, I would have stuck with Tom. At least he knew how to behave in a social setting_**.

Matthew snorted. Tom Turvey, Sarah’s ex-fiancé, had never in his memory gotten through any social occasion without getting drunk and making a fool of himself. 

And then finally, two minutes ago:

**_I don’t know where you fucked off to, but some of us are going out for drinks. You’re not invited. See you when I see you_**.

Matthew stared at the last text for a full fifteen seconds. Even six months ago, it probably would have sent him scrambling after her, worried that she’d gossip to her work friends about him. Now he just felt relieved he didn’t have to share a cab with her.

About to get up, Matthew remembered the text from the unknown number. He doubted it was important, but he opened it up anyway.

**_Matt, this is awkward, but I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t approach me tonight. I’m undercover. I know you hate that stuff, but it really is my job and I’m very close to collecting some important evidence. Would have contacted you earlier, but didn’t see you and Sarah on the guest list. Thanks in advance. R_**

**Chapter 3**

Matthew found he suddenly couldn’t get up. The combination of too much alcohol and emotional overload kept him pinned to the seat. He could only be glad he was in an out-of-the-way bathroom without other people knocking on the door.

A flood of memories poured into his throbbing head. Robin dancing with an awkward Matthew on one of their first dates in Yorkshire, her smile kind and her dress just low-cut enough to distract him. Robin, holding his hand as they strolled the beaches of Bath, trying to forget the rape that had cut her life in half, while a jealous Sarah fumed back at the dormitory. Robin at the statue of Eros in Picadilly Circus, crying as he placed the sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring on her finger while drunk vagrants applauded. Robin, white-faced and bloody, with a savage cut up her arm made by a serial killer of women. Robin, pale and unsmiling at their wedding, with eyes only for that big ugly fucker who had just sacked her for incompetence, and who had predictably ruined their vows by showing up at the last minute and knocking things over. Robin staring him down as he tried to stop her leaving their last marital home on Albury Street, her knowledge of his continued infidelity with Sarah Shadlock an insurmountable wall between them. Robin, lovelier than ever as they met for divorce mediation, guessing correctly that Sarah was pregnant and looking at him with the same kind eyes she’d always had, perhaps not yet forgiving him, but past the resentment that had poisoned their brief marriage.

Matthew glanced down at his phone with surprise. It was wet. As he looked, another tear fell from his chin onto the screen, blurring the next text as it came in.

It was from the same unknown number.

**_Possibly you don’t care, but mission accomplished. I truly appreciate your discretion. R_**

While he was still absorbing this, deciding whether to reply, one more text came in.

**_Matt, I know this is none of my business, but Sarah left ten minutes ago and she didn’t look too steady. Saw her go into Avenue with a couple of gents who were also three sheets to the wind and didn’t look capable of seeing her home safely. Ignore me if I’m intruding, but I’d want to know. R_**

Matthew stared at this message as if it were Robin’s face. For the moment, he couldn’t even process that he should probably do something about Sarah. He knew she’d likely be fine. Sarah was good at taking care of herself. Excellent, in fact. Rather than text his wife or his ex-wife, Matthew opened up the password-protected notes on his phone and scrolled down to a file labeled “Miscellaneous.”

The file opened with a thumbprint. The studio-perfect photo of a tall, handsome man and a gorgeous, strawberry-blonde bride staring at each other in apparent adoration as two swans floated majestically on the pond behind them filled his screen. Just for now, he chose to forget that they had been furious with each other, she incensed that he had blocked Strike’s calls from her phone and he enraged that she had been looking at Strike when the vow “I do” had passed her lips. Terrified that she was going to leave him before the ink on their marriage license was dry. Just for now, he bought into the fantasy the photographer had created. The ugly purple scar from the knife wound on her arm had been airbrushed out. Because they were turned in profile toward each other, their unsmiling faces looked romantic rather than grim. Robin’s simply cut dress skimmed her slightly-too-slim figure with runway model perfection, and the gems on her ring winked in the waning sunlight as her hand rested trustingly on the arm of the man who held her waist, who would be at her side for the rest of her life.

Brushing aside one last tear, Matthew typed quickly and without backspacing or correction.

**_You look beautiful tonight. Best of luck on your case. Hope I read about it in the papers. Mx_**

Perhaps it was the champagne that had made him add the kiss, but he wouldn’t take it back for the world. It was probably the last one he would ever give her.

Matthew Cunliffe walked back down the stairs, out through the Christie’s salesroom, where party tables were already being dismantled as the last guests streamed out, and into the steamy London evening. The walk to Avenue would take all of two minutes, but he deliberately slowed his pace to enjoy the night. As he turned left onto St. James’ Street, a red double-decker came to a stop on the corner. Waiting to cross, he saw a flash of emerald green as a slender brunette in a cocktail dress moved to the back of the bus, ignoring the eyes of virtually every male she passed as she made her way toward a lone figure hunched in a rear seat, taking up more space than should be allowed.

Then the light changed, and the bus was gone.

**FINIS**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to any who enjoyed reading this, my first ever fanfic! 
> 
> A few points to ponder for the Strike-obsessed:
> 
> Was it fair of me to make Matthew spend half the story on the toilet?  
> How is our view of Sarah influenced by Matthew's POV? How would she tell the story of this night?  
> Has Matthew truly come to see what he's lost, or is he being as lousy a husband to Sarah as he was to Robin, always wanting what he can't have?  
> Is Matthew's Audi Cabriolet a metaphor for his life?  
> Strike is not really in this story, but hovers around its fringes like a gadfly, living rent-free in Matthew's head. What might Matthew have done if he had actually run into Strike at the benefit?  
> Strike and Robin's relationship status is left deliberately ambiguous. What do you think the two detectives are up to professionally and personally? (I envision them investigating an art forgery ring, and that this is the case that finally knocks down the last wall between them.)  
> The action in this story takes place in 2017, before Harry and Meghan are married, before COVID. How much has the arts/entertainment/social scene in London changed since then?  
> I deliberately keep Matthew and the reader from seeing Robin's face in this story, other than in the wedding photo he opens at the end. Would it change the tone of the story if Matthew and Robin had locked eyes?  
> One of my favorite details of the story is Robin's utilitarian pumps and his disgust that she bought shoes based on whether she could run in them. If Matthew somehow got Robin back (yes, I know this will never and should never happen), would he really be the kind of guy who embraced his Yorkshire wife's bar tab quibbling, bus riding, cheap-shoe wearing ways, or would he be the same old superficial bore he's always been?


End file.
